1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a light-tactility conversion system, and a method for providing a tactile feedback.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, earnest researches are conducted to develop an operation interface such as a personal computer (hereinafter, “PC”) or various types of electronic devices (hereinafter, “PC or the like”) to be more intuitive and operable. In many cases, the operation interface such as a PC or the like uses in combination a physical input device, such as a mouse or a keyboard, and a graphical user interface (hereinafter, “GUI”) displayed on a screen. Furthermore, many small electronic devices adopt a touch panel as the operation interface. Using a touch panel enables an operation feeling that a GUI displayed on a screen is directly operated by a finger or the like, and thus, a highly intuitive and operable operation interface is realized.
However, since the shape of the screen does not change upon the pressing of a button on the GUI, a tactile feedback that is felt by a user at the time of pressing a button in the real world is not obtained. However, it is possible to provide a user with a virtual tactile feedback. For example, M. Fukumoto and T. Sugimura, Active click: tactile feedback for touch panels, proc. of ACM SIGCHI 2001, Pages: 121-122, ISBN: 1-58113-340-5, 2001 and I. Poupyrev, S. Maruyama and J. Rekimoto, Ambient touch: designing tactile interfaces for handheld devices, Proceedings of the 15th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology table of contents, pp. 51-60, 2002 disclose technologies for vibrating the touch panel according to a user operation and generating a virtual tactile feedback. The technology of M. Fukumoto and T. Sugimura relates to a technology for vibrating the touch panel by a voice coil. On the other hand, the technology of I. Poupyrev, S. Maruyama and J. Rekimoto relates to a technology for generating a vibration at the touch panel by an oscillator formed from multilayer ceramics.
Furthermore, in recent years, a technology for providing a force feedback to a user's three-dimensional movement is developed. For example, http://skla-bwww.pi.titech.ac.jp/frame_index-j.html and http://www.vrealities.com/phantomomni.html disclose technologies for restraining the body of a user or an operating tool (hereinafter, “operating tool or the like”) by using a string or a mechanical structure and generating a force sensation by controlling the restraining force on the operating tool or the like according to a user operation. More specifically, the technology described in http://www.vrealities.com/phantomomni.html is for measuring the position of the operating tool or the like by using the mechanical structure and generating a force feedback according to the measurement result. For example, a virtual cube is set, and a control is performed to generate a repulsive feedback at the time the operating tool or the like enters the cube.